You could always go round again in awful weather as a penance, Andy! Just to appease your guilt.
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A few photos all from early doors before the rain started blasting us:
An omen of things to come - all fully waterproofed up at the start
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A brief splash of a view from Dale Head
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Gav and Karl descending the scree gully from Kirk Fell
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Ascending Scafell moments before we were enveloped by the mother of all weather fronts
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Ambrosia Kid in shorts! He's as daft as me ;)
I supported section 3 on Saturday and I take my hat off to all contenders going for it that day and getting a long way in/ doing it; the down side to well supported attempts is when the weather is against you, you often need to "man-up" and go for it - and on Saturday many certainly did that - well done to everyone giving it a go.
Haha, thanks Simon. We clearly didn't man up sufficiently ;)
Our anti-clockwise leg three started from Wasdale at about 4:20 pm and we were within 200 yards of the top of Scafell just as the rain really set in. We were in cloud, strong wind and rain all across the boulder strewn tops with the rain becoming nightmarish after Great End. And that rain, cloud and wind pretty much stayed with us from there to when we pulled the plug at Threlkeld at 5:20 on Sunday morning. Our problem at Threlkeld was that we would have had to have got around Blencathra, Great Calva and Skiddaw in 3.5 hours. No amount of manning up and going for it at that point would have got us there
Exactly, when you have lots of support in place and people all mobilised to help you around, you can't just pull the plug because it looks a bit iffy weatherwise unless everyone can change dates at the drop of a hat and that's a very rare situation. It was a case of 'go for it whatever happens' or not know when they'd be able to get another date organised. I know a few people that have managed to change their attempts due to forecasts looking really bad and they've been lucky to have then been successful on much better days but that wasn't an option for Gav and Stolly so they just manned up and got on with it. Next time we may get lucky with the weather :rolleyes:
Ahhh, time for the next batch of washing and to see if the tentipi is drying out yet :)
Well done to those that got round and commiserations to those that didn't. They were horrendous conditions out, was not looking forward to supporting a JNC from Dunmail to Wasdale it was bad enough standing at Dunmail. Unfortunately the plug was pulled on this at Dunmail and I got the afternoon off.